


There Is No Peace That I've Found

by Lavendergaia



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-11
Updated: 2015-03-11
Packaged: 2018-03-17 07:48:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3521234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lavendergaia/pseuds/Lavendergaia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of Aftershocks, Fitz can't tell Jemma the truth, but Jemma needs to tell him hers.</p>
<p>A coda to 2.11.</p>
            </blockquote>





	There Is No Peace That I've Found

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Fitzsimmonsy for the beta!

Rubbing his eyes in exhaustion, Fitz rolled on to his side in bed. The only light in his room was the digital readout on the clock next to his bed shining a bright red 4:15. It seemed to be mocking him, visual evidence that the only thing he wanted right now was to sleep and that did not seem to be happening tonight. It was grimly amusing to Fitz that for so long, he’d just wanted to be able to get his mind working again and now he just wanted to not think.

He thought he could still feel the ground moving.

Aggravated with himself and the thoughts that would not settle, he sat up and groaned. Lying there and worrying about things was only going to drive him further out of his mind. Mack had mentioned working on a couple of busy projects to help get his head together and he was pretty sure his friend had set at least one out for him in the garage. Keeping his hands busy had never kept his brain completely occupied in the past, but this wasn’t the past anymore. He hoped for once that a mindless task would actually be mindless.

After slipping on some shoes and putting the day’s cardigan on over his sleeping clothes, he left the bunk area and headed into the kitchen to grab a cup of tea. If he was going to be awake, he was going to be awake and caffeinated. Unfortunately, the quickest route to the garage from the kitchen took him right past Coulson’s office and he could see a light shining underneath the door. He didn’t want to alert Coulson—or worse, May—to the fact that he was awake. He knew they worried, and whether they wanted to talk to him about things now or stewed on the information for a later date, it was a confrontation he wanted to avoid altogether.

The long way around took him past the bunks again. He considered checking in on Skye, but didn’t want to risk waking her up. She deserved to have one night’s sleep that wasn’t fitful and full of nightmares—one of them did at least. Fitz wasn’t even sure what he would do if she wasn’t good. There were only so many promises he could make that she would be okay, that it was all going to turn out right. The more he said it, the more the words sounded hollow to him.

He didn’t want to lie to her. That was the last thing he wanted.

This route also took him past the lab, where the few lights left on overnight cast an ethereal glow over the space, the chrome of the work spaces shining invitingly. He stared longingly through the glass, an acute pain in his chest. Truly, he had no real emotional connection to this room—he had always felt a bit like a refugee there, set adrift in a new space to rebuild and unable to return to his lost home. But still it reminded him of all the labs he had loved, all the things he and Jemma had created over the years, the feeling of home and comfort that had been immediate the moment they had walked into their space on the Bus.

When he saw her in the lab coat, her back turned to him, he first thought he had started hallucinating again. That his nostalgia and melancholy and homesickness for her and their place had conjured his phantom Jemma once more to taunt him. But then her hand swept one short curl of hair up behind her ears and he knew this was really Jemma.

His feet were moving before he could even process his confusion or what he planned to do, but he pushed open the door to the lab, knuckles white as he clutched the handle on his mug. “Jemma?”

She startled away from the microscope, her hand catching the edge of the lab table for balance. Her other hand flew to her chest and he could see it rise and fall quickly as she struggled to catch her breath; she seemed smaller under her lab coat than he’d ever seen her before and he had known her at 17, neither of them fully grown or ready to face the world and the choices they were expected to make, lacking the wisdom and maturity to be released upon humanity with all of their intelligence and bravado.

If there was one thing he had learned over the past ten years, it was that wisdom and maturity came only at the expense of bravado and that he had sacrificed the latter for far too little of the former.

Despite Jemma’s obvious fragility, she forced a smile at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t expect you there. It’s late.”

“I know,” he said slowly, easing himself towards her as if he expected her to dart away like a scared fawn. The way she bit her lower lip reflected some inner guilt—and was not, he reminded himself angrily, immensely attractive—but he couldn’t figure out what she was guilty of, other than being in the lab far after assigned work hours. She hadn’t moved to cover her work, so it didn’t seem that she was overly anxious over that. “What are you doing in here?”

She seemed confused by the question for a second, then gestured to the microscope and lab table that was littered with different slides, reports, and various samples. “Just…just working on things. It’s hard to get things done in here during the day, you know? It’s so…” She trailed off, then shook her head as if trying to remember what she had meant to say. “It’s loud in here. I guess I’m not used to that.”

The closer he got to her, the more illuminated she became: the dark bags under her eyes, the paleness of her features, the dullness in her gaze where he hadn’t seen a light since before she had left for Hydra, since perhaps even before that, when she still maybe had hope for him. He wondered if he had extinguished that light and if he could somehow bring it back.

“It does get loud in here,” he admitted, hoping he didn’t sound too placating. He expected she was too exhausted to notice. “Hard to hear yourself think.” Not, however, too hard to hear the psychological manifestation of your lost love and best friend think for you, but he decided yet again that it was best not to tell her that.

When she only nodded her agreement, Fitz set his tea down on the far side of the table. “What are you working on then?”

Jemma rubbed her left arm, tucking into herself as she turned back to analysis. “I was just looking at Raina’s blood sample again. To be honest, I didn’t really want to do this in front of everyone else. Everyone is so on edge lately about aliens and secret temples and I just—” She sighed. “I feel like everyone will be a lot calmer when we can just get back to fighting Hydra.”

Fitz wasn’t sure if she knew she was speaking about herself, but he tapped his fingers absentmindedly against the table. “Right. I think everyone’s just—they’re all—it’s hard to deal with. Losing someone.” He saw a hint of tears start to gather in her eyes again and it occurred to Fitz that he’d never really known where Jemma and Trip had stood with each other after her return, if he was bringing up someone she had cared about on a deeply intimate level.

“We couldn’t have stopped him, right?” she said suddenly, staring at him in desperation. “He was always going to go after her, wasn’t he?”

Nodding slowly, he took a deep breath, trying to control the sudden spike in his heart rate as he thought of all the times Trip and Skye had eaten dinner with him so he hadn’t had to sit alone and he’d just listen to them banter and laugh. “There was nothing we…” He swallowed hard. “I don’t think—no one on this planet or any other could have stopped Trip from going after her. It was Skye.”

She pressed her lips together and closed her eyes, but her shoulders loosened. It had been so long since she had turned to him for any sort of question or validation that Fitz had forgotten what it felt like to give her an answer that she might want to hear. Encouraged, he took another step towards her and nodded to the microscope. “You want to talk about your, um, your findings?”

Her eyes widened in surprise, as if she hadn’t expected him to offer. “Yes, I’d… It would be nice to have another perspective.” She picked up the tablet that had been sitting next to the microscope, tapping the screen quickly before handing it to him. “These were the initial readings of Raina’s blood.”

Even after having seen how different Skye’s blood had been, getting to see the samples up close and looking at the different genetic markers was a shock to Fitz. It was really outside of anything he had ever seen, even considering the extensive research they’d done on the Chitauri after the Battle of New York. He swallowed hard, trying not to consider what he would have seen in Skye’s lab report if he had given it more than a cursory glance before switching the samples and sticking all of the new blood in biohazard.

“It’s incredible,” he said, finally, knowing that she was waiting on some sort of reaction from him.

“Incredibly frightening,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “We thought that the Obelisk only killed people via touch, but now there seems to be an entirely new way that the Obelisk can hurt people. Thank God, Trip—” Her words seemed to catch in her throat. “Thank God he destroyed it when he did. I don’t even think we considered the possibilities that the Obelisk had other negative attributes because we were so concerned with the one we knew about.”

Setting the tablet on her lab table, he said, “But now that…I mean, since it is destroyed, that’s less to worry about, right?”

Her sigh gave away her weariness. “I’m not even sure, to be honest. Who knows what Hydra managed to manufacture before the Obelisk was destroyed? Even if they’ve run out of their supply, they may have been able to replicate its effects. And with Raina now…” Jemma placed a hand against her cheek as she closed her eyes. “She’s worked with them before, Fitz. Multiple times. And they’ve never really needed consent anyway. If they knew about what was inside of her, if they could weaponized it.” When she opened her eyes, they were brimmed with tears. “The people there, they find joy in the idea of killing millions of people. With what’s inside her, they could potentially create biological weapons of mass destruction. And that’s if she isn’t a walking one already.”

Fitz’s mouth was dry as he stared at her. “You sound like you want her dead.”

“I don’t!” she protested, covering her face with both hands. “I want… I want her contained. I don’t want her to hurt anymore people.” Her shoulders shook and Fitz was desperate to reach for her, but wasn’t sure if it would be welcome or even allowed. “She got Trip killed, Fitz,” she said, her voice meek and drowning in sadness. “She could have gotten Skye killed. And then she…she turned Trip’s tomb into a crime scene. I was in charge of that mission. I was in charge of those men and she littered the floor with their bodies for no reason.”

An idea that he had tried not to think about set itself firmly in his mind and it felt like a thousand pounds on his lungs. “She could have…could have killed you.”

Jemma shook her head. “I don’t care about—”

“I do,” he said and before he could second guess himself, he reached out and cupped her face with his hand. She leaned into his touch without hesitation and he allowed himself to wipe away a stray tear with his thumb.

She smiled kindly at him before picking up the tablet and looking at it. “I was comparing her blood against the samples we had of Skye—” Fitz’s heart stopped in his chest “—and then Coulson once I noticed some abnormalities. There are some markers that are actually similar to what we’ve seen in the recipients of the GH-325.”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Fitz said, “I guess that makes sense, whatever sort of mental trigger from the GH-325 is what led us to the city in the first place.”

“Right, and every recipient except for Skye was affected by that mental trigger,” she said and he could see a hint of the old Jemma in her eye, the one who loved puzzles and putting information together to form a cohesive answer. “And so far she seems to be immune to whatever changed Raina in those tunnels.”

A stabbing sense of guilt hit Fitz straight in the gut. “Why is that—what are you trying to get at?”

“What if Skye has some sort of immunity? Some sort of immunity to all of this?”

“You think Skye is…is special somehow?” His head and chest were pounding as he waited breathlessly for the answer.

Jemma shook her head quickly. “I don’t necessarily think so—just because we haven’t seen anyone else with this reaction doesn’t mean that it isn’t the case for others. Admittedly, we have an incredibly small sample size. But if one of three people could come out of that unaffected, then I think there’s a chance that there’s something in Skye that could be found, maybe in others as well. Like how the antigens found in blood types make certain blood types more resistant to cholera, malaria, even the Black Death! And that could be what this is, Fitz. This could be the start of something like the Black Death!”

Glancing back at the data on the tablet, he could admit to himself that it did look terrifyingly similar to what one would find before a pandemic. “And you think Skye’s blood or something in her DNA could stop it?”

“I think there must be a reason that neither the GH-325 nor the Obelisk negatively affected her,” Jemma said and Fitz wanted to tell her she wasn’t wrong, but he knew he couldn’t. “If we could identify whatever it is, we could create an antiserum, or—or even better, a vaccine to prevent anyone from ever getting sick in the first place! We could stop Raina and Hydra at their own game.”

It was, hypothetically, a good plan, if Fitz didn’t know that Skye wasn’t immune at all. “That sounds good, Jemma.”

She leaned against the lab table with her head bowed. “No, it’s not, it’s awful. Skye isn’t some sort of experiment. She hates being poked and prodded, calls me a vampire. I wouldn’t even know what I was looking for. Blood type? Genetic marker? And we only have so much of Raina’s blood to test it against, and that’s if we try to guess how she and Hydra would try to weaponize it.” Jemma let out a long breath. “I couldn’t do that to her. Because I know she would do it. She would think about how this shouldn’t happen to someone else, not what happened to Trip. And she would let me and I have to be better than that for her.”

His left hand shook as he gently placed it on her back; she had never felt so fragile to him before, as if she was the next person he loved to crumble at his feet. “Skye—she knows that you care about her.”

“I have to care enough about her to save her, even from me!” Jemma said, choking on a sob. Shushing her quietly, Fitz pulled her into his arms, a move that was both instinctual and familiar as she buried her head against his neck as she had done dozens of times before. He wasn’t sure what to say as he stroked her hair, not when he had had the same fleeting thoughts. “I should have known that nothing alien could be good for us, we should have anticipated things like this, we should be ready!”

His hand stilled on her head, strands of her hair wrapped around his fingers. “Are you talking about the Chitauri virus?” There had been a lot of candidates for the worst day in his life since joining S.H.I.E.L.D., but nothing had managed to top that day. Sometimes when he closed his eyes, he still saw her face before she jumped.

Sniffling loudly, she said, “I mean everything, Fitz. Thousands of people died in the Battle of New York, and then virus was left behind and those poor men died.” He noticed that she specifically left out herself and what the virus had done to her on that day, probably still did to her in the middle of the night when no one could hear her scream in her sleep. “And then there was the Asgardian staff—if Ward hadn’t been meticulously maintaining his cover by instinct, he probably could have killed us then. And then Lorelei.” Her hands tightened in his shirt as she looked up at him, guilt clear in her gaze. “We let you down there, let her control you, but we could have done something if we had some sort of plan for these things! And why don’t we, after Loki?”

“Jemma, you’ve never—”

“And the GH-325!” She shook her head violently. “All of the bad things in our life are from that stupid, alien drug! People died to replicate it, Coulson was tortured over it, Skye was shot because of it!” Her voice got louder with every word. “Ward was put on our team to find the truth. If not for that, he wouldn’t have done what he did, he never would have had the chance to hurt you.”

Fitz found himself at a complete loss for words as he watched her break down in front of him. “I know that that drug brought Coulson back and saved Skye and I love them both and I will never regret having them in our lives,” she said urgently, voice thick with emotion. “But sometimes…sometimes I wish that it didn’t exist. And I hate myself for that, even though I remind myself that it drove people out of their minds, drove them to murder, and it’s how we were led to that city, it’s why Trip died and Raina has a chance to potentially kill millions of people.” She rested her head against his shoulder, eyes seeming not to see anything. “But they’re worth it, right? Coulson and Skye. They’re worth it.”

“It’s not…that’s not the point,” Fitz said, pressing his lips to her hairline. “We can’t look at things that have already happened and…and see what if, except to try and do better. And it’s not your responsibility to make up for the mistakes of other people, or even to try and decide if it was a mistake.” Kissing her forehead, then resting his cheek against it, he said, “You can only do what you think is right, Jem. And you always do.”

“Then what am I even doing, Fitz?” she begged, clinging to his sleep shirt. “What am I doing with my life?” She took a long, shuddering breath as she pressed her face against the skin of his throat. “I wanted to learn everything about the universe and all I’ve learned is that everything in the universe wants to hurt us. There’s nothing I can use to help people, make the world better. I feel like I’ve wasted my life, my education, my intelligence, when I could have invested in something that could have actually done some good for the world.”

“You can’t possibly think that,” he said, unable to keep the anger from his voice. “You’ve done amazing things. You…” He stumbled over his words, choking on his misery. “You think all that we’ve done together has been useless?”

“No, no, no!” she said quickly, tears dripping down her nose. “Nothing I’ve ever done with you has been a waste of my time, Fitz, no.” Rubbing her eyes, she muttered, “You were the only thing I ever did right. But I got Trip killed—”

“Hydra got Trip killed! Hydra, and Raina, and…and Trip.” Jemma looked scandalized, but Fitz clenched his jaw. “He knew the risks, every time he went out into the field knew it. But he would never have left Skye, any more than…than I would leave you.”

Jemma laughed bitterly, though it sounded more like a sob to his ears. “And that turned out so well for you.”

Fitz ducked his head, squeezing his eyes shut. “Jemma…”

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. Fitz wasn’t entirely sure what she was apologizing for; he had a feeling there wasn’t one specific thing. There was just a general air of sorry and sorrow.

He’d wanted to hear an apology from her for so long, for leaving, for not saying goodbye, for abandoning him. It sounded hollow and unsatisfying now, unable to fill that place in him that had only ever just wanted Jemma back. Placing his hands on her shoulder, he leaned in and said, “Don’t be sorry. Please, don’t be sorry for anything.” She nodded, deliberately not meeting his gaze and it was a stranglehold on his heart. “Um, but, if you…if you need to hear it, I forgive you.”

Her brown eyes were wide and hopeful and his heart all but shattered in his chest. “Do you, really?”

“Of course, Jemma.” He raised his hand to cup to her cheek. “I’m...I’ll always forgive you. And I need you to know that there has never been anything that you have done that has ever been useless or a waste of time. Nothing.” She opened her mouth to argue, but he shook his head. “If you need to…question or reconsider, then…alright. I’ll listen. But not now. Not—” he gently pushed up the left sleeve of her blouse, glancing at her watch, “not at half five in the morning.”

Letting out a long breath, she nodded. “I should get rid of this stuff before the techs come in, I don’t want…I don’t want anyone asking questions. Coulson wanted me to work on—”

“Coulson would want you to go to bed.” Fitz touched his thumb to the bag just under her eye, relieved when she didn’t flinch away. “When was the last time you really slept?”

Her silence was answer enough for him. Nodding, he quickly put away the most volatile chemicals and tools that could not be left out, hiding her reports in her usual drawers. “That should be good enough for tonight.”

“That’s horrible lab protocol,” she said, smirking.

“You sound like Professor Vaughn.”

That actually got a laugh out of her and his insides ached with how much he had missed her laugh, missed her laughing with him, at his jokes. When she finally calmed down, she reached for her tablet, just to turn it off and leave it on the table. “I missed it,” she whispered. “Watching you work. In here. With me.”

The admission made him choke on his own guilt. “If you need me, you can just…ask.”

“I always need you,” she implored. “I don’t want you to be anywhere you don’t want to be.”

He wasn’t sure how to tell her that it was his desperate need to be close to her that was the hardest part. “C’mon,” he said, resting his hand on her lower back. “You need to sleep.”

Luckily, despite it being the time of night when many agents would be waking and starting their day, they met no one as they traveled back to the bunks. Fitz left Jemma standing in the middle of her room after she let them in, immediately pulling back her blanket. It smelled of her fabric softener and the scent hit him like a ton of memories as he fluffed up her pillows. She was watching him carefully as he went to her dresser and pulled out a pair of pajamas for her, the ones with the roses that were always his favorite. “You remembered,” she murmured, smiling happily.

Fitz frowned in confusion until it hit him that he had never been in this room, certainly never been in that dresser. But in all the years he had known Jemma, in all of the S.H.I.E.L.D.-provided dressers she had owned, she had always kept her nightclothes in the third drawer from the top. Blushing proudly, he shrugged. “Yeah, ‘course I remember.”

She started unbuttoning her blouse and he turned around quickly to afford her some privacy. He waited until he heard the mattress springs squeak under what he assumed was hardly any weight at all. She looked so small in the bed, the blanket her grandmother knitted for her lying on top of the generic blue plaid S.H.I.E.L.D. comforter. “Fitz,” she said warily, her weariness sneaking into her voice. “I know it’s been a long time, but would you stay with me?”

He instantly knew that there were many valid reasons why he shouldn’t. He also knew that there was no way he could ever tell her no. “Sure.” After shrugging off his cardigan and setting his shoes next to the door, he pulled back the blankets to crawl in next to her.

When his head was set in the pillow, she curled up next to him. She had always favored his warmth. He almost jumped when he felt her kiss his neck before she snuggled her head against his chest. “Thank you, Fitz.”

“Always,” he said, stroking her back as he listened for the rhythmic sound that would indicate she had finally fallen asleep. His own exhaustion no longer mattered to him; he needed to know that she was going to be okay, at least for these few hours.

The longer the time went on, the more he knew that changing Skye’s test results was the best decision. As he kissed the top of Jemma’s head, he mentally pleaded with her not to hate him forever when she found out. He needed to keep Skye safe, always—he cared about Skye, wanted her to feel that she was always home and whole and herself because as far as Fitz was concerned, she was.

But Jemma was falling apart around him and to even think for a second that she had lost Skye… Fitz didn’t think she could handle it. He needed to protect her as much as he needed to protect Skye because they were both in danger of Jemma’s pain and misplaced guilt tearing them apart. He would never let anyone hurt Jemma and that included herself, not when he could protect her. He would give her his support and his only breath and the only truths he thought she could handle if that’s what she needed.

Her presence at his side was comforting despite the dark swirl of thoughts in his mind, and he eased closer into her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. As he sank slowly into sleep, feeling her softness against him, he reaffirmed his decision to continue protecting all of the people he loved. He kissed Jemma’s forehead one more time before joining her in unconsciousness; there was no one he loved more.  


End file.
